Is a major conflict imminent in the Middle East?
Another sabotage attack on tankers that, unsurprisingly, the US blames on Iran. The timing is interesting, to say the least. The EU is struggling to safe the so-called "Iran-deal" and the US has recently been very vocal about the threat posed by Iran.
Assuming these attacks were indeed ordered by Iran, what could be the strategic considerations behind them? The governments of both the US and Saudi Arabia might feel that now would be a good time to distract everyone from their internal problems.
Assuming these attacks were indeed ordered by Iran, what could be the strategic considerations behind them? The governments of both the US and Saudi Arabia might feel that now would be a good time to distract everyone from their internal problems.
Comments (124)
Iran has other things in mind than to instigate conflicts.
ps -- Watching PBS news. "Mike Pompeo offered no evidence but blamed Iran" for the attacks on the oil ships. That's how it works. If Trump doesn't fire these guys soon we'll be a full-fledged shooting war.
LOL You guys will never give up. That Putin nonsense was invented on the night of the election by Robby Mook and John Podesta to deflect attention from how they managed to lose the most winnable election in history. How did the left sign on to this farcical red-baiting from the 1950's? I'm old enough to remember when the left instinctively distrusted the duplicitous bullshit coming out of the intelligence agencies.
Is anyone surprised?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rz5fZziMWEE
Significant and major conflicts have been going on in the Middle East for quite some time. No need to wait--it's here.
The French Ambassador to the UN (formerly to the US) said in an editorial today that the world is becoming a more dangerous place. There are many ongoing conflicts with the potential to become much hotter and larger, and there is currently no cop on the beat, and no clarity internationally about what to accept, tolerate, forbid, or actively suppress.
So, expect trouble.
Anyone remember Syriana, 2006, which won George Clooney Best Supporting Actor Oscar? It provided some insights into the byzantine politics over there.
But having Bolton and Pompeo fanning the flames can't help. Don't forget Bolton's role in the Iraq war, which he helped instigate and still defends. He's champing at the bit to bring down the mullahs. I don't think a false-flag effort by some Middle Eastern player covertly egged on by elements in the US is entirely beyond the realm of possibility (and I'm not a conspiracy-theory-monger, either. But in the chaos that is the Trump White House, these kinds of out-of-control things could surely fester.)
But I'm sure Trump genuinely doesn't want a shooting war. He got into office on the pledge to withdraw American forces and disengage from the region, and that's one thing he's said that I believe is true (at a ratio of about 1:10,000). He doesn't want war, but his grasp of facts, policy and strategy is so feeble that he might end up embroiled in one due to his own incompetence (illustrated by his hiring of a known war-monger as 'security adviser' in the place of the prudent and strategically canny H.R. McMaster who was fired for committing the cardinal sin of not licking Trumps boots.)
But I am not sure Trump genuinely knows what he wants. He is an opportunist. He will play any angle that he thinks is to his own advantage, and what is to his own advantage may not coincide with what is to the advantage of the United States. He believes that any action he takes will quickly and decisively put an end to the problem, and when it doesn't he will have plenty of others to blame.
One thing I am sure of is that whatever happens for Trump it will be personal. He has repeatedly demonstrated his inability to see any issue in any light other than how it reflects on him. Perhaps he is already making plans to build a TRUMP Tower on the rubble.
His plans don't matter, he's a poster boy.
Don't underestimate Trump. The Republican Party did and now he owns them. They went from dismissing him as a joke, to accepting him because he had to votes but thinking they would still call the shots, to kowtowing. A major part of his danger is his unpredictability coupled with the predictability of the GOP not to oppose him as long as they think riding his coattails will get them re-elected.
What's so sad about?
Trump doesn't care a shit about anything else but himself.
For Trump to talk about endless wars was as hollow as his talk about fighting corruption, draining the swamp, was exactly just 'campaign talk', just something you say to get votes. Or do you really think someone wanting to build an even better military would really think about the endless wars? Heck, the guy was for attacking Libya. You had to be a idiot to believe this guy. So that makes a lot of people umm... well, you know.
Iran on one side, UAE on the other. A blockage there would be the rough equivalent of a cerebral aneurysm for the global economy.
Or they didn't do it.
I mean: assuming that they want to go to war with Iran, what's the reason? Does anybody has a convincing explanation, different from the silly one that "that they are bad people"? A lot of people says that there is an economic convenience for them if America goes to war with Iran. If this is true, how do they earn money from this exactly? Only by selling arms? They are not the owners of arms industries, right? So how do they get the money exactly? And if it's not about money, then what's their motivation? Personal ambition? Making the world a better place? or what?
I heard a lot of different opinions about these issues, but nobody never gives a convincing explanation of how the whole system works, and what are people's motivations to act as they do.
I think Bolton believes that peace, stability, freedom, and democracy can only be established if we dominate the region by military force, but the motivation is not to do what may be in the interest of the region but the self-interest of the United States.
This sounds as an altruistic motivation: the United States have to spend their money and their soldiers to ensure peace, stability and freedom for people on the other side of the world.
I would say that the self-interest of US (or at least the self-interest of the citizens of US) is exactly the opposite: they should care only about their own peace, stability, freedom, and democracy.
What you are describing sounds more like an altruistic interest, and not self-interest.
No, I am saying that this seems to be Bolton's position. You asked why do Bolton and Pompeo want a war with Iran.
Quoting Mephist
The primary motivation is self-interest. This is why Bolton is opposed to negotiation and the United Nations. He does not want to given anything up. He sees it as a threat to our autonomy to agree to anything where we have to make concessions or compromise.
Quoting Mephist
What goes on in the Middle East is a matter of our self-interest. Instability in the region has global economic impact.
Quoting Fooloso4
OK, I was speaking about Bolton's position too. So, let me reformulate it:
Bolton's position is that the self-interest of the United States is to dominate the region by military force, so that there will be peace, stability, freedom, and democracy, and not to give up anything in negotiations, to be able to impose their will without any concessions.
Quoting Fooloso4
That's the thing that in my opinion doesn't make sense: you are saying that US trying to dominate the region by military force to ensure them freedom and democracy.
How can Iranians be free and have democracy if they will be dominated by a foreign by military force? Isn't this an obvious contradiction?
Let's suppose that, after loosing a war against US, Iran will become a democratic state. Well, the first thing that they would vote for (if they really were a democracy and were able do decide for themselves) would be to get rid of the domination of US!
You can't allow them to have freedom and democracy, if you want to dominate the region. Isn't it obvious?
The goal is to control those in power, those who would attempt to seize power, and the people. The people are most easily controlled, that is, less likely to revolt, by providing for a measure of freedom, stability, and resources. But in order to accomplish this those in power must cede power, and that typically requires force. Democratic elections are supported, unless the U.S. fears that those elected will oppose its interests. This is born out by history.
Quoting Mephist
There are different forms and various degrees of domination and freedom. But freedom and democracy take a backseat to stability and peace, the latter includes friendly relations with the U.S.
Quoting Mephist
Yes, this has happened in the past. On the one hand, I think the expectation is that the people will see how much better things are with the help of the U.S.. On the other hand, the Russians are not the only ones who interfere with elections.
Quoting Mephist
I think the expectation is that freedom and democracy will help secure stability. The more stable the less necessary it will be to actively dominate. The presence of the U.S. would serve as passive dominance. I don't know how much of an ideologue he is though. Freedom and democracy may be noble goals, and for this reason are always a selling point for military action, but the interests of the U.S. come first.
Because they want to kill people for their personal advantage. War has two steps: justification and invocation. The justification rarely has anything to do with individuals' real reasons for declaring war. Invocation is the point where the war mongers declare 'all other options are exhausted, we have no choice but to attack the evil empire.'
Perhaps only if Iran does not do what they want. Like Bush's "Mission Accomplished" they may believe that all that is needed is a show of power.
It doesn't matter what Iran does any more. Whatever Iran does they will say its not enough. That's been Iran's complaint.
Do you mean they earn from selling arms? What is "the profit yielded from selling the means to kill people" ?
But what do they want exactly? That the religious leaders leave their places to people chosen by US? How should Iran regime be changed? What should they do to avoid war?
They don't want to avoid war. They do everything they can to start one. They don't have ethical beliefs like you or me. They think themselves naturally superior to other people and have a right to kill them for their personal benefit, like slaughtering animals. They manipulate other people with ideals, but they don't believe in them themselves except perhaps for patriotism, and even then, if they thought the USA could lose they'd probably switch sides.
Quoting ernestm
Are you claiming that they personally profit from arms deals? How?
I think they want to eliminate any threat to the United States from anywhere in the world.
One way to try and avoid war is by negotiating and compromising, but for Bolton that is off the table.
Here is a link: https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=90&page=transcript
Prescient. The "military-industrial complex".
One difference is that Eisenhower witnessed war first hand, they did not.
I think what their policy has exactly the opposite effect: the threat to the United States is increased from Russia and China as a result of keeping their nuclear arms constantly in state of alarm. Exiting from ICBM missiles treaty the time of reaction when a missile launch is detected is reduced to minutes now, and there are increasingly more nations that have ICBM missiles pointed to the US and ready to launch. So the risk of a nuclear war is surely much bigger now.
Surely US military is perfectly able to estimate the risk caused by politicians' choices, so I don't believe they care too much about the increased threat to the United States
I agree.
Really very interesting. Thanks for the link!
Hence my comment "prescient".
"Neocons are trying everything, including false flag operations to get the US to war because the military-industrial complex wants a war."
And.... that's basically it. Nothing else. And nothing else than what is decided in Washington is important. No other actors seem even to exist on the scene. Every other country is just either an innocent target of US aggression, an innocent bystander or a lackey of the US without any own agenda. And here it would be extremely important to discuss the agenda of Israel and Saudi Arabia. People might know philosophy in this forum, but their knowledge of Clausewitz might not be on such level. Above all, the idea seems to be that it's either peace or the all out war and nothing else in between. Yet there is a multitude of options not only the US can do, but also a multitude of other players that can have different responses also. It's basically international politics.
So is war imminent? Look at the following photo:
It is a picture of AMERICAN SAILORS surrendering to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. 10 sailors were detained and later released by Iran. This happened in 2016 and... no war happened. What the incident did was that it got some US Navy officers fired, but no cruise missiles were fired against Iran. The debate about if the US will attack Iran, which is just a lousy option by any standards, typically doesn't really take at all into account how actually the US has handled Iran for a long time.
And this should be noticed when discussing these issues just by "are we going to war or not". The US has had incidents with Iran, yet typically the US will launch attacks only at far weaker countries. With stronger opponents the issue is about the scale of the response where the only response isn't to attack Iran.
So I'm not convinced that there is a major conflict imminent. There's a lot can happen, a small military incident is more imminent that a major conflict, but typically the "nearly WW3"-option is that people get excited about.
Besides, the US never, ever has any kind of desire to have strategic surprise on it's side. It will declare it's intentions publicly because the most it's worried is how the US voters take the issue. And they have to be put into a warmode. Israel, on the contrary, seeks to gain strategic surprise. Hence if Netanyahu is aggressively vocal, it likely means that at least Israel won't attack any of it's neighbours.
I'd say generally you are right, but the USA does not have a monolithic opinion, even in its government. There are war hawks who are looking for war, and they jump on these opportunities for justification of their opinions.
Notably not even the Japanese or the ship's own crew agree with the USA narrative on this story.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japanese-ship-owner-contradicts-us-account-of-how-tanker-was-attacked/2019/06/14/7ea347d0-8eba-11e9-b6f4-033356502dce_story.html
That has not stopped 'America' from declaring it Iran's fault.
If one doesn't regard an increased probability of a disastrous war with Iran as sad; one might be putting their politics ahead of their humanity.
Was I stupid to hope that perhaps Trump meant what he said about ending the ruinous wars? Certainly his militarism was a warning and a concern. But what was the alternative at the time? Hillary was a known warmonger. She was allegedly behind Janet Reno's disastrous attack on the Branch Davidians at Waco. She was behind Bill Clinton's war on Kosovo. Her vote for the Iraq war, along with her impassioned speech in favor of the war on the floor of the Senate, gave centrist liberals cover for supporting that war. Hillary could have stopped Bush, she chose to enable him. As Secretary of State she was behind the destruction of Libya, and got started on the destruction of Syria, which was completed by her successor John Kerry.
So if one was for peace, the choice was between Trump who at least talked the talk even if there were doubts he'd walk the walk; and Hillary, with a long track record supporting the neocon maniacs.
If you call hoping against hope for peace stupid, and you don't think the latest neocon attempts to start a major war in Iran are sad, I'd ask you to try to step outside your visceral feelings about Trump and try to figure out what you actually stand for. If it's peace, you better be sad at these latest developments.
If you'd rather see a war to prove you're right about Trump; than see peace and perhaps admit he was in the end less a warmonger than Hillary; you better check your partisanship. It's getting in the way of your humanity.
ps -- You may recall that Trump knocked out Jeb! by calling Jeb! out on Bush's invasion of Iraq. I didn't hear Hillary speaking out against any war, anytime, anywhere, in her entire career. If you want to make the case that Hillary is a great pacifist, I'll take the other side of that debate. Nor do I think Trump was lying. He has a crazy negotiating style. So far he's avoided getting us in any major new wars. So yes I'm hopeful in that regard. And note that it's the left's Russia hysteria that's endlessly ratcheting up tension in that direction. Just look at the NYT story yesterday about how the US is waging cyber warfare on Russia's power grid. Trump denies the story. Who's the warmonger here?
This is a naive assumption.
Iran is very different compared to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, which are the "successful" wars. These countries were isolated diplomatically and weren't preparing for decades for war with the USA.
Iran has friends and has prepared since decades for war with the USA. Iran has also been able to observe these other wars and plan accordingly.
Iran has very favourable mountainous terrain and has "global force projection" in the form of being next to the straight of Hormuz. The above mentioned countries could do nothing that would affect the global economy. So, if you just bomb Iran without taking the coast, then no ships (would get insurance) to travel the straight of Hormuz. This makes a "bombing into submission, internal chaos or significant weakening (to invade later)" campaign a lot harder as it would affect the global economy and create reasons for nearly every other country to apply pressure to stop the war.
Iran also has for certain the Russian made S-300 air defense system with "unknown" upgrades that may make it the S-400 with a S-300 label to please the West. There's never been a test of either S-300 or S-400 against American planes. Maybe it's a total fail, but I haven't seen any compelling arguments to believe that would be the case. Iran doesn't share a border with Russia, but does share the Caspian Sea, which as far as I know, there's no way for American ships to enter the Caspian and no way for other neighboring countries to effectively blockade the Caspian, assuming any of them would want to (which is doubtful). So, it's easy for Russia to resupply Iran with anti-air equipment and missiles. A pure bombing campaign could easily turn into a war of attrition of anti-air vs air assets; the only way this wouldn't be the case is if the S-300/400 system simply doesn't work or there's both a physical and diplomatically viable way to blockage Russian re-supply (or the even more remote possibility Russia abandons supporting Iran). You keep bomb the Russian ships in the Caspian ... but you'd only need to do that if the S-300/400 system is effective, in which case you now have to deal with many more such missiles ... and de facto declaration of war on Russia (one of the key points of a blockade is that it makes it ambiguous who is attacking who first).
Keep in mind also, that effectiveness of stealth against the S-300/400 system is unknown. Stealth is visible to long wave radar, although accuracy decreases as wave length gets longer, it may nevertheless be accurate enough to send missiles in the general direction of the plane which have a reasonable chance to find the plane with shorter wave radar, infrared, signal processing and maybe some algorithmic guesswork, it then becomes a question of sending enough missiles. A quick web search tells me that a S-400 battery is 300 million USD and comes with 120 missiles, so the upper bound of cost / missile is about 2.5 million with these figures. The S-300/400 system is also modular, with the various radar, signal processing equipment, missiles and launch platforms installed in different locations, and each part can have a off-line backup, so a single hit may not take the system out or then leave it easily repaired. An F-22 is 150 million and F-35 is 85 million USD, but the cost of training the pilot must also be included, in addition to the enormous PR cost of the loss of any of these stealth planes in addition to the traditional PR cost of potentially captured pilots.
The F-35 and F-22 planes took a lot of money to develop and are supposed to last decades, so even a below even attrition rate between these planes and the S-300/400 system would be a pretty big PR victory for Russia and Iran, no one would really care if Iran paid more / owes more to Russia to shoot down these planes than they are worth (i.e. one battery firing all it's missiles on average downs 2 or less planes).
What's more, an air-war-of-attrition favours the defender if they can be resupplied with missiles and equipment, as it's much easier to test different algorithms and gather data to improve the missiles and radar systems than it is to improve fighter jets (an iterative process against a largely fixed design), and Russia would be certainly extremely keen to make every effort to improve their system.
Now, if one or two F-35's are lost to temporarily disable S-300/400 systems in support of a ground invasion, then that would be completely fine from a PR perspective and doesn't result in an iterative attrition process as described above.
But a ground invasion of Iran, again, cannot be described as target practice. Sure, the world's super power would probably prevail, but it would be a massive undertaking and result in casualties. There's also no easy root to Tehran, which is far from the coast and the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan (which may not be practical to invade from these "conquered" countries anyways as it would super-charge domestic insurgency elements and Iran foreign insurgency tactics against the supply chain).
Also critical, Trump is unlikely to be able to "sell the war" to allies or the home audience, both due to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars seen as costly failures and due to Trump himself having zero credibility, at the same time Iran has been building up diplomatic credibility as the US is losing it.
For all these reasons, to answer the OP, I'd bet a conventional war between the US and Iran as unlikely as well as just a "bomb a bunch of stuff to make a point" being unlikely as well.
Whoever is behind the attacks on the tankers, I would argue it's to either just increase the cost of oil and make bank as a oil supplier or futures trader (2-D chess), create a crisis to create diplomatic pressure (3-D chess), or it is the staging events to more dramatic events to shutdown the straight of Hormuz to create a global crisis (4-D chess).
More important than whatever is said in these threads is what the dominant narrative will be that shapes what happens going forward. It has become standard practice for presidents to declare war without the consent of congress. So it may be that whatever narrative is playing in Trump's head at any given moment could be the determining factor.
The Trump admin maybe now finding out why Obama cut the Iran deal: that it is by far the best option and all military options don't go anywhere without a full scale invasion that would cost thousands, possibly tens of thousands of US soldiers and mercenary lives, which no American wants.
That it of course played great to the Republican base to criticize Obama striking a deal with Iran (so Republicans harped on about it as much as they could, and it was just "bold common sense" for Trump to withdraw from the deal and increase sanctions) ... but that same base isn't actually going to support American lives being lost.
What is their thought process? That the US military is essentially magic and that there must be some way to deal militarily with Iran without losing any lives.
If a bombing campaign isn't feasible, as I described in my post above, my guess is the war room meetings keep spinning around from "we could invade this way or that way ... but we'll lose soldiers ... and it maybe slow going resulting in months of closure of the straight" and "we could just send cruise missiles to blow something up ... but what are we accomplishing? they'll be testing nukes sooner or later".
Also, keep in mind that the reason the US could escort ships through the straight during the Iraq-Iran war was because Iran was not at war with the US, so would not wantonly fire on US warships. Obviously that changes in a US-Iran conflict, and Iran can keep firing missiles at anything in the straight as long as they can access the coast; Iran has been stock piling anti-ship missiles for this purpose and tankers are possibly the easiest target in the sea other than islands.
Quoting Fooloso4
This was certainly true in the previous wars, but Iraq and company were easy targets that could be bombed or invaded with ease. And so, as you say, all that mattered was a "plausible narrative" for talking heads in the media and politicians to prattle on about, even if no one believes it (which a lot of people did).
What is different with Iran is that there are real obstacles and real geopolitical consequences to any significant bombing campaign and even more obstacles and geopolitical consequences for a land invasion.
Even at this stage in the escalation, the US may have no good options and is already losing even more credibility. Obviously diplomatic credibility has been jettisoned already, but revealing that idiotic decisions lead immediately to unmanageable consequences.
However, now that Iran has downed a 120 million US asset and US already claims the Tanker attacks were Iran and that sufficient reason for a military response in itself, the logical response if stealth technology works is to go and stealthily bomb a whole bunch of Iran military assets. If stealth technology doesn't work then the logical response would be to do nothing or to maybe send a bunch of cruise missiles.
The situation is quite severe in terms of the US military industrial complex massive investment in stealth technology for both the US military and export. Already there's a lot of doubts about stealth technology; a bunch of European nations see no need for it -- now, there's certainly niche applications where it's important to be invisible to civilian or out-dated radar, but that would only justify needing a few such planes ... not all the planes, as is the premise of the F-35 program -- but as long as it's never really tested, it doesn't really matter.
However, to reveal in a dramatic fashion the technology isn't useful against anti-air that exists on the market today, not to speak of years from now, is a big problem even for the massive budget levels of the US military. Of course, all else being equal, it's better to have stealth, but things aren't equal as stealth requires major sacrifices in terms of both cost and ordinance capacity. If a stealth plane costs twice as much to buy and maintain, has less range, and delivers half the ordinance, then it's really a 4 times more expensive plane or worse.
Of course, US arms industry doesn't claim stealth is magic, just a significant advantage, but the situation emerging with Iran is the opportunity to demonstrate this significant advantage. Already it can be claimed by a reasonable observer that not doing it is admitting the advantage is not so great. A very large amount of stealth sales will be lost if both the US military and other buyers of the F-35 lose faith in stealth, and the entire military posture of the US air force, navy and marine corp placed into serious doubt.
Why this whole stealth thing is crucial to understanding the situation, is that there's potential this could be a situation where US arms manufacturers lose money from military conflict, due to decrease in stealth technology purchases and increase in Russia exporting the S-300/400 system, leading to even less desire for stealth (if people start to believe it can easily deal with stealth, due to US stealth inaction in this situation in Iran). Keep in mind, US arms manufactures can't export anti-stealth systems without abandoning stealth technology themselves ... so, unless stealth works, then they've created an entire multi-billion, multi-decade market for systems that can shoot down their stealth planes that they can't participate in for obvious reasons, and on-top of this fewer and fewer people will want their missiles specifically designed not to shoot down stealth aircraft, and on-top of this placed the US military in a position of needing to never use these stealth systems in a way that might demonstrate they are not cost effective.
It's bad for business. One of many reasons Obama struck a deal with Iran precisely to avoid this kind of situation.
Informed proponents of stealth, that accept they can be shot down, claim that stealth will shine against modern anti-air systems using coordinated attacks of many aircraft. However, such a dramatic attack that fails (sending dozens of planes that get shot down) would just amplify all of the problems listed above in the loudest possible manner. It would be a big gamble.
We will see in the coming days. What is for sure is if the US has been bluffing with their stealth technology, Iran is calling that bluff. Of course, US command themselves may have no idea how effective sending lot's of stealth planes would be. The entire stealth program was likely premised on only ever needing to bomb mercilessly failed states ... which makes sense if the goal was to have a more or less stable world where there's no reason to attack functioning states like Iran. But then who do you bomb? It seems the US has run out of weak isolated states to mercilessly bomb. Again, terrible for business.
According to CNN, citing a military staffer, describing the chairman of the joint chief's position:
[quote=cnn;https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/iran-us-drone-shot-down-latest-intl/h_df61f78d1a6cec0fb56a0078599050d8]
General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, continued to point out in internal discussions that what to do about Iran is a policy question, the official said. If the policy is a military response, then Dunford is prepared to explain in detail the cost of doing that in every discussion.
The official said the military view is this:
If you want to really stop Iran’s nuclear program, that immediately gets you to regime change, which is an enormous undertaking.
If you want to respond with a single strike to any particular Iranian provocation, you cannot predict how Iran might react and it still risks leading you to war.
[/quote]
This may also explain why Trump is de-escalating his own rhetoric, claiming the drone incident maybe just a mistake by a missile operator, captain, general, what-have-you, rather than threatening to turn Iran into a lake of fire.
I wouldn't be surprised if Trump later throws Pompeo and Bolton under the bus, ridiculing and firing them for not being able to deal with Iran: "I brought them in to deal with Iran, couldn't even do it, military said cost would be high. Sad. You know I said it, I said those trillion dollar planes was too much for a plane. I know planes, I know those guys, they're great guys. The best. They make great planes, but we need to accept the planes couldn't take out the missile sites in Iran, just couldn't do it. I said: well go blow them up! Military said they couldn't do it, just couldn't. We need new planes ... or a lot of drones; I'm talking so many drones, drones like you wouldn't believe it. I hardly believe it, and I've seen these drones and all the plans to make a lot of them, so many, so many they'll be so many drones like you wouldn't even believe. Beautiful." Which would be the coherent part of the speech, followed by the incoherent part explaining why pulling out the Obama deal was still a great move, the best move, had to do it.
Edit: it's obviously a joke the lake of fire thing being an escalation. So far there's a 1:1 correspondence between threatening turn a country into a lake of fire and the next day expressing a deep love for the supreme leader of said country and the entire issue disappearing from the news.
Actually, the US has already tested the S-300 system, not to the S-400 Triumph and many allies and friendly countries to the US have the system, like Greece, Ukraine and Egypt. The US even bought some missile systems from Belarus in 1994, not with everything but still.
Yet the truth is that Russia has actually been ahead of the US in SAM missile technology. This of course is actually totally understandable as the US relies on total air supremacy (the last time US forces were attacked by enemy aircraft was in the Korean War) while Russia has understood the importance of Air Defence. Yet typically the top-of-the-notch systems haven't been sold or simply haven't been effectively used by the armies that the US (or Israel) have attacked.
But I agree with your observations. The US military knows quite well it's own limitations. This has been more of response-with-increase of troops. It happens some time with Iran. These scares with a strike on Iran happen all the again once the average person has forgotten the past crisis. But of course if tensions rise even from this, I would start to be worried.
And let's not forget that Trump's hardcore loyalists aren't actually neocons, so he has to really walk this carefully.
Yet the worrying thing is that there are not many adults in the room with Trump. All the generals in the White House have either left or been fired, which was one of the few good moves Trump did (because obviously Mattis, Kelly and McMaster were recommended to him and weren't eyeing for any political positions, yet one earlier general was a different case, who didn't last for long).
Here we find Trump's habit of dissembling saying two different things at once:
"They made a bad mistake". "They made a very big mistake" "A general or somebody made a mistake."
A deliberate act of aggression by Iran ("they") against the United States might be called a mistake, underestimating the response. But "somebody" making a mistake might be based on incorrect information about the locations of the drone or somebody acted without authorization. What the appropriate response might be in the first case is not the same as what the appropriate response might be in the second case, but all Trump will say is "you'll find out". Since Iran acknowledges it shot down the drone the somebody possibility that Trump "imagines" stretches the credibility of somebody who has little or none to begin with. Will the evidence that Trump says is "documented scientifically" be released to the public or to congress or the United Nations?
By S-300/400 I mean to reference the S-300 "with upgrades" the Russians have sold Iranians.
What matters is not so much "having" an S-300 or 400 or some mixture, as taking out 1 battery the US could certainly do with overwhelming force.
What matters is that the Russians can resupply Iran with replacement parts and missiles and they'd be motivated to show their equipment works and highly motivated to tweak, optimize, and resupply.
This is the key difference with Iraq, Afghanistan and Lybia, which were isolated countries that didn't require much to topple over into a failed state.
Quoting ssu
For the past I agree.
The problem this time is that Trump not only pulled out the deal but slapped sanctions not just on Iran but anyone trading with Iran, so trying to force the other signatories of the deal to break it too.
Trump supporters love to mention that "the Senate didn't ratify Obama's deal". Ok, US doesn't care about diplomatic credibility. Other countries, however, do care, and see it as important to fulfill their part of a deal they signed (why Europe is working on a legal framework for companies to trade with Iran and avoid US sanctions).
And so, for the rest of the world that cares about diplomacy, Iran has a legitimate grievance. So unlike in the past, Iran now has a credible position to develop nuclear weapons if the deal isn't upheld. It's going to be difficult to get parties that signed a deal to prevent Iran developing nuclear weapons to pull any resources into accomplishing the same goal with money and lives. Only Trump thought that was a good idea.
And, only Trump supporters think it's common sense that the "deal was crap". Europe, Russia, China Iran and the US (with advice from their military and intelligence agencies) all signed the deal because it made sense.
Whereas before the deal was signed, there was a real risk to Iran that Nato countries would invade to prevent nuclear development (and without credibility, Russia could not be counted on to help; selling the Iranians anti-air was in parallel to the credible deal of not developing nukes, which Russia doesn't want either).
Post-deal, post-Tump tearing up the deal, now it's going to extremely hard to not only bring any other country into the war but very hard to pressure other countries to pressure Russia to not resupply Iran air-defense. Before the deal, war was a lot easier, but still extremely costly and destabilizing; hence the deal.
I imagine you support the Iran deal; however, it's not obvious all the diplomatic implications, which now put the US, as the joint chief says, in the position of going to war and a costly regime change ... or some sort of escalating tit-for-tat leading to war anyways ... or Iran develops nuclear weapons.
A major conflict is ongoing in the Middle East, and for many years now.
Well, I believe that's how science works.
Trump also mentioned they didn't put no man or woman in the drone, and Iran's lucky about that, which I think is also documented scientifically.
But I agree that Trump is just hedging his bets in every possible direction, but I only see him doing this because he's decided a war with a lot of American soldier and mercenary deaths wouldn't be good for re-election. Americans like their army and war, except for the American's dying for no good reason part.
If a "bombing the shit out of them" is also not practical due to Russian re-supplying air-defense, then there's simply no good violent option.
However, unlike North Korean and Venezuela, the situation can't just be walked away from at this point. US would need to back-off the sanctions either explicitly or signal to Europe to get the work-around up and running.
If Trump was already aware they had no good options after tearing up the deal, he may have brought Pompeo and Bolton in just to be able to blame some neocons for the failure. It seems reasonable somebody told him at some point how things would play out (only way to stop Iran nuclear program would be War) ... but I wouldn't be surprised if he just avoided such talk until it became unavoidable with recent tensions.
My guess is Trump liked having generals because he thought they would follow orders ... but discovered generals aren't good at brazen lying, so they became a liability and Trump got rid of them.
Neocons, which I agree Trump doesn't care about their grand full-spectrum dominance vision, at least know facts and integrity doesn't matter if you have the power ... and even if you don't have the power, facts and integrity still don't matter.
This would be my guess of the switch from military men to neocons; they're good propagandists and Trump needs that, not bureaucratic competence.
However, Trump's experience as a bully maybe why he doesn't attack Iran. A bully instinctively knows you only prey on those who can't fight back; Iran can offer a fight, so it just doesn't make any sense to attack them, why risk it? (Shooting down the drone, whether it was in or outside the border, is Iran calling it that this is the case.)
Let's discuss this in detail, if you are interested.
First the S-300/S-400 systems are technically very challenging to operate. You have to have able technicians to even keep the system operable and get the performance of the system. You might have the money, but do you have the qualified and well educated crews?After poor performance of it's own personnel, Egypt solved this problem simply with having a huge number of Russian advisors simply manning the whole AD network. Hence we would have learned by now if Russia would have sent the operators too with the missile systems. Now Iranians aren't bad in tech: they have kept flying the F-14's even after a long war with Iraq and have had the ability to add to their fleet the Iraqi aircraft that defected to Iran (during operation Desert Storm).
The second issue is that the system has low combat survivability in the modern battlefield. It cannot move easily, a missile battery is a big observable target (especially when it puts it's radars on). In fact the S-300 (and the S-400 too) have to have their own air defence as we have seen from the Russian deployment of the systems to Syria.
Two Russian S-400 launchers in Syria with a Pantsir S2 system on the right:
Just to show how complicated these weapon systems are (here the S-400 Triumf):
If we think the only time when Trump did fire the cruise missiles, while eating a lovely chocolate cake with the Chinese leader, the strike had all over it written "Plan of the generals". Or then, plan of Mattis. First, the Russians were notified about the attack in order to prevent an escalatory response. Second, the strike was quite theatrical yet not strategically logical: one air base was attacked by tens of cruise missiles. Yet it was confined to one airbase, not a strike against the Syrian Air Defence system's command structure. Hence basically it was a show of force, a tit-for-tat warning, similar which the Israelis typically do now and then. So I guess Trump still listens to his military.
You are correct that Trump is a genuine bully. Not some person that has long term plans or an ideology behind his actions. Those guys are even worse, because they will go through the ranks to find the general that is willing to execute their bold utopian plans. And let's not forget last Marine general Trump has started his interaction with the Trump administration with openly going against Steve Bannon's schemes to put him out of the loop and still is present when Bannon is long gone: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford.
The last Marine general still working with Trump on the right:
If he resigns from active duty, the only thing a general can do when he doesn't want to follow the Commander-in-Chiefs orders, then hit the panic button.
Trump is the only one in Washington holding the line on peace today. Senator Lindsey Graham wants us to sink Iran's navy and bomb their oil fields. Trump's not doing that. He's saying he believes the drone shooting was not a provocative act requiring a deadly response.
Perhaps he'll blow up an oil field or two to placate the hawks. But what I see today is Trump remembering that he ran on a platform of opposing the stupid Middle East wars. I would say today is one day, and this is one moment, when even the diehard Trump haters should take a moment to reflect and to hope that Trump actually does have the coolest head in Washington right now.
I will agree with those who say he was wrong to abrogate Obama's nuclear treaty with Iran. That was a provocative act. But it doesn't mean Trump wants to start WWIII. Lindsay Graham does. I have no doubt Pompeo and Bolton do. But Trump, I think, is on the side of peace today. And I hope all the Trump-haters out there realize this; or at the very least, are hoping for the best.
Would Hillary be slow on the trigger? Her three-decade track record on militarism is appalling. You know that. So Trump was the peace candidate in the miserable choice we were given in the 2016 election. Trump called out Jeb and implicitly Bush 43 on Iraq. That's not nothing. It was unheard of at that time for a Republican to speak forcefully against the Iraq war.
I'm for peace. If you're for peace too, this would be a good moment to be on Donald Trump's side tonight as he talks down the generals.
Yes, it's a very interesting topic; if these systems do work it changes the global power dynamic.
Quoting ssu
Well, I assume Russia did send operators to train the Iranians. However, more importantly, in my view, is that Russians can send in a team to fix the system. And if the Russians would really would want to be hands-off in downing American planes, Iranian teams can keep going to Russia for training. Iran is not a standard dictatorship where the army is mostly afraid of the population, nor is Iran intellectually oppressive and unable to both foster in their society and attract into their army intellectuals that can manage these systems effectively.
Now, maybe not effective enough or maybe the system simply doesn't work, but I wouldn't assume these things can be taken out simply due to incompetence.
Quoting ssu
Well, this is what we would find out if the Americans attacked Iran with stealth planes.
However, the photos you posted don't give an accurate impression.
The system is modular and all the components can be separated by some distance and have backups.
A truck seems really easy to spot if it's in the middle of the Siberian tundra, but you can easily put a box over it and make it look like a normal truck and drive it around civilian roads, or keep moving it around at night and setting up camouflage during the day; again, an army has a lot of trucks it's moving around all the time. It can also be one of several launch trucks and far from the radar and command and control stations and maybe you can have individual launch tubes that are even harder to spot.
Quoting ssu
Yes, radars can be easily seen, but the radar components can be far from the actual missiles which are far from the command and control and there can be backup radars. Attackers may have to actually look for the other components or then just bomb everything that might be something in the area, but then need to contend with shorter range systems.
Generally, S-300/400 refers to the long range system which is part of a layered defense including shorter range anti-air. If one of these systems was being attacked, it would probably launch longer range and then medium range missiles and then turn off. Shorter range systems would then turn on (that can see stealth aircraft due to the short distance).
Of course, you can then bomb these shorter range systems and once all anti-air is defeated just keep bombing things.
The question is not that the system can be defeated, but how many planes and other air-assets are lost during this process.
Critically, if it's not a ground invasion but just a bombing campaign, the Iranians can salvage whatever equipment survived, get replacements and setup somewhere else.
Also keep in mind, that the Iranians can keep this system off until the Americans are bombing something, then turn it on and fire a bunch missiles at a bunch of planes and then disperse the system into hiding (with lot's of decoys around as well). To inflict any significant damage on the Iranian military, you need to send a lot of planes and a lot of bombs, and the Iranians can just wait. If the Americans decide to wait too ... well then there's no bombing campaign.
My basic point is that, if stealth doesn't really work, then the Libya strategy of bombing things into a failed state and calling it a day can't work without continuous air losses. The air losses might simply be too high to reach failed state status; you have to bomb a lot of things to exceed a population's ability to cope and repair things.
Hence, the conclusion becomes a land invasion is the only route to regime change, but we know that this results in casualties even with total freedom in the skies as well as dealing with the 2 decade "quagmire" afterwards.
The difference is that the Syrians couldn't retaliate anyways. So vis-a-vis the Americans, it's not tit-for-tat, it's just tit.
With the Iranians, any small retaliation can create genuine tit-for-tat that keeps escalating. The Iranians can tat to your tit, so it's not just a theatrical performance for the home audience, there maybe real consequences to sending a dozen cruise missiles to blow something up in Iran. Iran blows something up too, then what, where does it go?
It goes straight to Iran doing everything possible to develop nuclear weapons during this tit-for-tatting process. Then one day they test a nuke. What happens then?
Again, the invariable conclusion that emerges is a ground invasion is necessary if you don't want Iran to have nukes nor do you want a deal.
Now, Trump may genuinely not care if Iran develops nukes or not, but there's the rest of the world.
Rest of the world may just keep to the Iran deal. This makes a mockery of American power. What happens then?
For sure the talking heads will be spinning in their swivel chairs, I guarantee you that.
Damn, I talked up a storm for nothing.
From this moment forth you may call me: Storm Talker.
Quoting Michael
Until this moment.
Fishfry is suffering from Reverse Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Yet competence is a factor that has to be taken into consideration. We (as armchair generals) tend to look just at the performance charts of these systems. You do need a lot of technically trained people. In order for an Air Defence network to operate one needs a functioning command and communications network and an efficient Electronic Warfare capability, which isn't actually so easy to do. Just to give an example of the neighbouring state Iraq (which of course isn't Iran): During Desert Storm the Coalition Forces captured intact an Iraqi Electronic Warfare System loaded on trucks. They took it back and assembled and tried the system in an NATO excersize in Germany and the NATO communications in that excersize went haywire. Thus if the Iraqis would have used the system in the defence of Kuwait, the US and Coalition forces would have had a far more difficult time.
Or take a different example, just to show that this is a problem of Western countries too. Start of the civil war in Syria Turkey asked NATO countries to give support to it and Germany deployed Patriot SAM units into Turkey. Once in Turkey, the Germans noticed that many of the missile systems were broken.
Quoting boethius
Yet without the radars both the S-300 and S-400 systems are quite harmless.
Quoting boethius
Or more precisely, what is the most effective asymmetric way to respond to get to the US? A mine or a barge filled with explosive in a harbour where a US Navy vessel is might be most efficient way to do it.
Trying to outmatch the US with a conventional build up is very stupid. Just look at how the Taleban is fighting the US: Americans are looking for people that are moving fertilizer in Afghanistan. The mine/IED approach to limiting US operations is one low-key yet highly combat survivable strategy. First and foremost, Iran has to have the ability to survive a US 'pre-emptive' or retaliatory attack.
And then there is the tale of the Millennium Challenge excersize 2002, where another Marine general, Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, played the OPFOR (basically the Iranians) and basically won... by sinking an US Carrier Battle Group on the first day of the excersize. Even if the Blue Force was respawned, knowing the actually timid culture of the military, the message was heard.
(USS Enterprise after an accident with a Zuni-rocket during the Vietnam War. These kind of images would send political shock waves even if the US Navy wouldn't suffer tactically a huge setback. Such incidents would dent the image of the US armed forces very dramatically.)
What leads Trump or any US President to think twice about these issues is the following: what is the downside if things go bad? Thus attacking Afghanistan or Sudan or Yemen or anywhere you are opposed with poor rag-tag people with antiquated weapons is a safe bet. Not attacking Iran or North Korea.
As we have seen again and again.
Are you auditioning for Sarah Huckabee Sanders' job?
Your points are very relevant in a situation like a ground invasion (as you mention in Iraq), where things are being bombed all over the place, chaos is erupting, enemy troops are advancing towards the capital.
Absent a ground invasion, you don't really need much integration and coordination and training (you still need enough, but not nearly as much as using these systems in the context of a ground invasion).
You can rely on other radar for early warning and / or just wait until you're being bombed, then turn on the S-300/400, fire a whole bunch of missiles, turn it off and try to skedaddle or just let the visible parts of the system (radar transmitters and launch vehicles) get destroyed and replace them later. If you go searching for the other components (command and control, radar receivers, spare missiles) or just "drop a lot of bombs" in the area, now you have to contend with a bunch of cheaper and shorter range sam systems.
Maybe Americans can play this game all week without losing a single plane. Maybe not.
Now, I'm not saying the American arms manufacturers are incompetent, but I'm also saying the Russian arms manufacturers are likewise not incompetent. The proposed methodology for taking out modern sam sites is sending a bunch of stealth air-craft which fire a bunch of missiles at stuff using advanced signal analysis. Maybe this will work. But if it doesn't, a bunch of aircraft got committed and are shot down.
The reason I'm stressing on this is because the US military posture just made a massive commitment to stealth technology with the F-35 and various stealth drone programs. Usually, this sort of "does it actually work" doesn't actually matter because the kind of conflict where it would be tested doesn't arise. However, this Iran situation is exactly the opportunity you'd want if you were eager to show how your 5th gen multi-roll fighters are great at taking out sam sites. So not doing it says something, doing it and failing would say something much louder.
In the not doing it case; well you can always blame something else. Allies that toe-the-line will still buy the planes. But in the doing and failing case, it's going to be really, really hard to keep up the pretense the F-35 program is a success; not even the US military and congress are able to brush off a trillion dollar waste.
The reason for developing this argument is that it seems at first glance any military conflict would be good for the US arms industry, but this particular stand-off actually has potentially huge downsides and embarrassments if you do send in the stealth fighters and they get shot down. So it's a very unusual situation.
A full ground invasion solves the problem ... but is that really a reasonable way to solve the "stealth doesn't work problem". Doing nothing ... well already at this part of the conversation, Russia is sitting pretty to sell a lot more S-400 systems; what happens when they're all over the world and keep piling up and keep getting cheaper and easier to use, if stealth doesn't work, all the American carrier groups full of stealth aircraft become ocean ornaments.
It made sense in a world without the neo-con driven Ukrainian conflict to ... I guess they wanted to spank the Russians by taking their Naval base in Crimea away, nor the neo-con re-igniting the cold war rhetoric, nor Trump taking American diplomatic capital, standing in the middle of oval office, letting it smash to pieces on the floor and then continuing to grind the pieces to dust every time he or a neo-con passes through.
In a world minus all that, sure the Russians can probably down stealth air-craft but they wouldn't be just handing out such systems to Syria, China, Iran, India, Turkey to provoke the Americans.
So, if other nations are decades behind Russian sam technology, then a huge investment in stealth makes sense. If the goal isn't to full scale war with Russia, then it's just a question of preventing Russians from selling their sam technology.
American soft power could easily stop such a proliferation of advanced Russian sams, by treating Russia with a minimum of respect due a country with thousands of nuclear weapons and having cards to play like sanctions and toppling allies like Syria and so on and applying other forms of diplomatic pressure through allies.
Problem today is all those neo-con "new cold war dream cards" have been played and there's zero disincentive for Russians to sell their system to whoever wants to buy it. The neo-cons started the process, but Trump is accelerating it resulting in potential for stealth to be obsolete decades ahead of schedule.
This would be a major policy disaster for the US military global posture, and one (of many) geopolitical issues at play in this Iran situation.
Edit: Neo-cons of course haven't learned anything from their schemes failing (it's Obamas fault), which is why they are starting to buzz about the need to be using tactical nuclear weapons.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/magazine/hypersonic-missiles.html?em_pos=large&ref=img&te=1&nl=magazine&emc=edit_ma_20190620
The question is not whether the US has a lot of planes.
The question is how useful these planes will be in a world where there is a proliferation of advanced sam systems the Russians are now selling to everyone.
I am going to go out on a limb and predict that we'll eventually find out what the real reason for the canceled attack was. And by eventually, I mean as early as next week when Trump tells us at one of his rallies. He will say that, yes, one reason was to spare Iranian lives, but another reason was that (and not very many people know this) sam systems were clearly tracking the planes and could have shot them down, so the mission was canceled; that he had said "do it, but don't lose any planes".
Quoting Willyfaust
I have no idea what this means, please elaborate.
As for nukes, sure Isreal or the US could nuke Iran.
""...On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone..""
Well, the question is obvious: how many people are the equivalent of an unmanned drone?
I'll wager an educated guess.
Scenario 1: The proposed retaliation was never meant to take place, but the threat of it was a way to gauge international response to a possible attack on Iran.
Scenario 2: After the retaliation was announced, Trump received word that the attack would provoke an unwanted reaction from some other international power. As to which, I dare not speculate.
Scenario 3: After the retaliation was announced, it became clear there simply was not enough support either domestically or internationally. The narrative wasn't believed, so the attack was called off to avoid reputation damage.
I think it stands beyond reasonable doubt that the drone was flying in Iranian airspace with the precise intention of getting shot down.
Judging it an accident by either Iran (firing at something not in their air space) or the US (flying into a country's air space by accident) deserves no mention.
Furthermore, the MQ-4C Triton drone is practically defenseless against modern air defense systems, so any reaction by Iran would be almost guaranteed to result in a destroyed drone. This must have been calculated beforehand.
Finally, I find it unlikely that Iran's response of firing at the invading drone came as a surprise to the US. It is exactly what one expects to happen when invading an enemy's air space.
I am sure there are some who do and some who may not but will still defend Trump's indecisiveness on that basis. I doubt that he was only informed at the last minute as to estimated causalities, if in fact that was the estimate and not just something Trump pulled out of his ass to cover up whatever forced his hand.
All three scenarios seem plausible. Here is another one, more in line with his schoolboy mentality: show that he is tough by preparing to attack and then that although he is ready and capable of doing this he won't, that he is the bigger man in control of his strength.
I think that is backwards. I think that it is because he is stupid and childish and narcissistic and vindictive that he does what he does. He is completely unprepared and unsuited for statesmanship.
What people underestimated was his electability. The one thing I will give him credit for his skill as a self-promoting conman. There is ample evidence of his failures as a businessman. Despite his father's bankrolling him with millions of dollars to start and many millions more along the way, he filed for bankruptcy six times. U.S. banks refused to lend him money. Along the way he defrauded the IRS and left many contractors and workers without payment in full. Then and now he has over and over again demonstrated a pathological need to lie. Now as president he has alienated our enemies and courted dictatorial enemies.
So he would have us believe that up until that point the issue of how many people would be killed had not occurred to anyone involved, not Trump, not the unnamed General, and not the other unidentified military officials who "had to get back to him".
In addition, what does it say about a president who is poised to strike but does not consider the question of proportionate response until half an hour before they were scheduled to launch?
At the same time as Trump called the attack, the senate was debating on his sale of weapons to United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and other countries neighboring Iran. Just after the GOP made a rare move against Trump and blocked the sale, he called off the attack.
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734437874/in-rare-rebuke-to-trump-senate-votes-to-block-saudi-arms-sales
No news media agency has noticed the timing.
It was likely the arms sales to its neighbors that caused Iran to get more aggressive in the first place, and unless Trump tries to veto the bill blocking the sales he negotiated, or retaliates, its likely to be the end of any Iranian military action. But if the sales had been approved, Trump would probably have carried through with the attack.
So thats what actually has been going on in all likelihood.
If I remember correctly I read about the vote to block the sale in the afternoon, hours before Trump called off the attack. I don't know the timeline of when he ordered the attacks and when he learned of the Senate's blocking the sale, but I don't think he only learned of the Senate's opposition minutes before he called it off. It may be that he ordered the attack before learning the sale was blocked, and it may be his decision to call it off had something to do with his fear that they might not back him, but calling off the attack with minutes to spare still seems suspicious. A show business cliffhanger with him saving the day.
Im sure he was not expecting the senate to block his arms sales though and he will be very angry about that, although he wouldnt say so publicly, hes going to be chastising his party for a few days now.
For myself Im very surprised the gop actually stood up against him and Im less fearful of a nuclear war in the next 9 months, but in the end I dont think even the senate will be able to stop it.
It would not surprise me, but as Trump is fond of saying: we'll see.
You both seem to want to make things both simpler and more complicated than I would argue is plausible.
First, Trump has definitely proven that he imagines what sounds best and then jumps to just saying that, regardless of whether it makes any sense or is in consistent with what he's being saying so far.
"Sparing Iranian lives" is obviously what sounds best as a reason for not responding militarily to a military attack on a military asset.
These things happen, the US has always responded to these sorts of events, with or without casualties. The US has military planners, has generals, has analysts, has intel, and has always multiple plans and options available, and people can always go make more. If the concern was casualties, there was certainly a plan available that creates no casualties.
Also, the US has always responded based on their version of events and completely dismissing anyone else's version.
So, taking essentially anything Trump says as meaningful insight into what happened -- that he sent the generals to do something and only found out later there would be causalities, and there's no plan B of striking without casualties, so he called it off -- is buying into the oversimplification not just of Trump's incoherent speech, but the shallow analysis that is found in the media.
However, that there might be a connection to the congress vote to block the Saudi Arabia arms deal is way over complicating things. Trump can veto this legislation that's trying to veto his approval of the arms sale to Russia, and it's generally agreed there are not enough Republicans that would vote against to veto Trump's veto; in other words, this vote against the arms sale is only symbolic and doesn't prevent it.
Also, other theories like "sending Iran a threatening message" by attacking and the cancelling are also over complicating things. That's not how you send that kind of message.
The only message sent here is that you can blow up a US asset and the US is unwilling to respond in kind.
If they really do know that the drone was in Iran airspace and that was the reason, then they would say something like "oh, in reviewing our logs, something, something, maybe drone crossed the line to avoid a potential collision with another aircraft" or some excuse like this. But they haven't, so imagining that they've used some over-complex logic of this sort based on maybe there's other evidence out there is very implausible; they would just dismiss any other evidence even if it came to light. And, anything reasoning like this doesn't stack up to the mission being nearly launched and then cancelled.
Now, it's possible it's only due to Trump's unpredictable personality. But I feel if this was the case there would be moaning and groaning from the neocons ... well, which there is, but I feel there would be more of it, and especially a lot of focus that it makes US look weak to not respond at least in some way (both from leaks with very angry planners, generals, analysts, as well as pundits picking up on it).
My theory I believe explains things much better. They wanted to blow of anti-air sites; well if it looks like those air defenses will be in some way effective (dozens or even hundreds of ground-to-air missiles could be launched), then the answer is to send more planes, but there would be losses: even for blowing up something without casualties (Iranians can't know the target and even if they did may defend their airspace anyways). As I mentioned in my previous post, American commanders themselves may not know the effectiveness of their anti-anti-air equipment and methods.
I agree. I do not think that his decision had anything to do with what he said. I was poking holes in his claims not trying to explain his decision in terms of them. I am sure that an analysis of causalities is something done at the beginning and was discussed early on, not something that no one considered until Trump brought it up at the last minute.
Quoting boethius
As I said, I don't think that explanation matches up with the timeline. I do think that in general he is very concerned with maintaining the appearance of a united front though.
Quoting boethius
Trump does things his own way, and that includes the messages he sends. I do not think that whatever messages he might be sending are intended only for Iran but to the American voters as well. The thing is though that if he did intend to send a message it is not at all clear what that message is.
Quoting boethius
That would be to admit some responsibility. One of Trump's mottoes is deny, deny, deny. I think the U.S. was playing a game of chicken and lost.
Quoting boethius
They have for the most part turned a blind eye to whatever Trump does. This thing has not played out yet. If they think he should not have attacked then calling it off was a good thing. If the think he should have attacked, there is always tomorrow. In either case, they are reluctant to expose him as erratic and indecisive, but again, there is always tomorrow. That too would make the U.S. look weak.
Quoting boethius
I don't see how this explains why he went from being "cocked and loaded" to calling it off at the last minute.
Yes, we definitely agree on this point. Though we can't dismiss what Trump says in terms of analytical value, nor can we dismiss the possibility that his account is exactly how it happened, it's extremely dangerous to start analysis with an unreliable account.
My theory, that the presence of advanced SAM caused the last minute cancelling, is supported without Trump being president nor any of his words. If Obama was president the analysis would be just as sound and follow the same logic.
Doesn't make it true (it could really be Trump is that "mindy-changy", whatever his reason was), but it's usually a good approach with respect to geopolitical events to first make de-personified analysis, what are the real relations between powers and how are those real relations changing (due to technology, trade, armed victories and defeats, etc.), and then afterwards consider to what extent personalities could guide or even radically alter outcomes. There's a bunch of reasons to approach things this way, which we can get into if there's any doubts, but I hope my theory here presents the merits of "geopolitics" as a framework.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, this is exactly the unquestioned assumption in the Western media. Not a single journalist, as far as I know, has questioned the assumption that Trump could have destroyed those SAM sites and killed those 150 Iranians if he had wanted to without any air losses of any kind on the American side.
In my theory, it was agreed that they need to blow up something, as that's just what they do in these situations and Trump obviously sees the logic in that (he didn't start this whole thing with Iran to look weak), but there's genuine ambiguity if it can be done without suffering any air losses of any kind. There's also ambiguity if Iranians would dare fire back at US planes with real pilots in them. So, mission is a go, planes are sent, and when the Iranian radar and SAM sites respond in a way that would likely result in American casualties the mission is canceled.
For, the real balance of power on the ground is that Russians have been setting up advanced air defense (far more advanced than Iran had before) and certainly helping the Iranians deploy all their anti-air assets in the optimum way. The whole point of air defense is to defend the air; the Western media has gotten accustomed to the fact that for US opponent, air defense doesn't matter and has simply carried through the assumption to this case. But it does matter. If you want to go and attack a SAM battery, it is a reasonable question to ask whether that SAM battery has more than 0 percent effective chance at fighting back, as is it's entire purpose.
The purpose of stealth plane technology is to defeat SAM batteries despite their purpose being to destroy planes, and do it with easy. But stealth is a fairly old technology at this point that the Russians have been working on defeating since whenever they first heard Americans were maybe developing it. It's possible that their system works.
If the Russians have created an effective air defense in Iran, then pursuing the attack would likely result in American air casualties. This would be a terrible position to be in: throwing good lives away to avenge a drone loss. It's also US attacking Iran and Iran simply defending itself; so it doesn't make a good argument to go and avenge the pilots that died avenging the drone.
Now, whatever the real sequence of events, which we may never know, geopolitical analysts around the world will make one clear conclusion: Iran got advanced air defense from Russia and suffered zero air attacks. (as you say, this could change tomorrow, if my theory is correct then it won't change, if I am wrong then the US going and flying around Iran and blowing a bunch of things up would be proof my theory is wrong.)
As I mention in a previous comment, US went "all in" on stealth and it's simply too soon in the procurement cycle to admit it doesn't work; just using stealth planes as you would normal planes would be a PR disaster; sending in non-stealth planes when you have stealth planes would be a PR disaster.
All this analysis is also not "in a void". The US commitment to stealth technology was highly criticized during the development and "all in" phase -- I mention above it wasn't "stupid" for the reasons I explain, but doesn't mean people didn't see this exact situation coming -- and US has been making "a big stink" about Russia selling their S system to anyone: Russia had to climb down from selling the S-400 system to Iran and only supply the "S-300 with upgrades" (though no one knows if that's anything more than changing the label from 400 to 300) to appease US complaining, and US has been threatening Turkey with sanctions for buying S-400, and there's also a diplomatic roe with India about the system. So all these facts fit my theory.
As for what difference, if any, does Trump's personality and words change the analysis. Well, I think it fits in nicely. When Trump lies, he often let's slip relevant themes (such as accusing an opponent of something he's been doing or won't hesitate doing), so in this case perhaps "potential casualties results in mission canceled" is the right theme, just not Iranian casualties. Also, Trump understands branding very well, so he would certainly understand why revealing the stealth isn't so stealthy would be terrible for the American brand and also showing weakness is terrible for America's brand, so understanding this and being good at branding, he'd come up with a good PR move: such as "I wanted to spare Iranian lives, it's not worth it for a drone" (and just ignoring the fact you can blow things that have no people around, even if just symbolically to make the point that you can blow thing up but don't want casualties, so we blew up this radio tower or this bridge with no one on it, or both!).
But, as mentioned above, regardless if my theory is correct, geopolitical analysts in other countries will assume there is enough probability in this theory to buy or develop advanced sam systems that can shoot down stealth aircraft (this was already happening, it will just happen faster now, and this is why you wouldn't want to create this situation if you were a US president).
Sure, US can completely alter their conventional war fighting paradigm, but this can't be done over night; even the US military cannot replace trillions in assets like they were nothing. It takes time to develop, test, procure weapons and weapons platforms, and develop the war fighting doctrines and skill sets that go with those systems. An Empire cannot simply "lose a decade" and get em the next decade without major repercussions.
If my theory is correct, why did this happen: stealth technology is a huge barrier to entry (in the arms supplying market) and it's incredibly profitable to perpetuate the idea it's effective even long after sophisticated enemies have invented systems that can defeat it.
Edit: again, if this theory is correct, explains nicely why neocons are starting to move onto casual use of tactical nuclear weapons as a normal and reasonable thing to do: they've corrupted themselves into a corner, and now they have to nuke their way out.
As you can probably verify from the timestamps, I did. In fact I speculated that he'd probably "bomb a couple of oil refineries," which is probably what he was planning to do till Tucker Carlson talked him out of it. Even Trump haters have to acknowledge that this week he's the sanest person in Washington. Among the Dem 2020 candidates, only Tulsi Gabbard advocates for peace, and she's polling at around 0.3%. What's wrong with the Democrats these days?
There is nothing sane about his posturing and threats and calling for a strike and then calling it off at the last minute for still undisclosed reasons.
Quoting fishfry
Have you forgotten or are you just ignoring the fact that Trump brought the world to this precipice by backing out of an international agreement and putting a stranglehold on Iran with his sanctions? And then he ignored Pompeo who said that the sanctions were working and decided to escalate the situation and then call it the attack. He created a crisis and now has everyone guessing what will happen next.
Air Defence needs coordination and integration right from the start. It has to detect an incoming strike, it has to coordinate it's own actions with your own aircraft (not to shoot them down) and it has to know when to attack, when to put on or shut off it's radars.
Quoting boethius
Relying on other radars is what basically a functioning AD Network is all about. Yet that data has to be linked to you via some command structure. And if your S-300's are safely hidden in some warehouse or inside a mountain cave, then you have to get them out, prepare them for firing and get the radars working. Doesn't happen in an instant. If you then have everything ready, but just not the radar on, then as these weapon systems are big, they can be noticed and attacked. That's why the combat survivability isn't the same as with more mobile and smaller systems. Hence the need for a layered multi-system approach. Which then puts even more stress on the technical ability of your people.
Quoting boethius
Let's remember that the Serbians shot down an F-117 with an old relic, a SA-6. (The likely reason was that the USAF had to resort using same air corridors in the crammed Airspace. Hence when the Serbs noticed that an F-117 had flown this route, they positioned a SA-6 exactly on the route.) In an armchair debate about the weapon systems nobody would believe that a SA-6 would shoot down stealth aircraft, but so it happened.
There never has been a golden bullet and reliance on some specific technology and nothing else is simply stupid. Countering tech with more tech isn't also the only answer. An asymmetric response is usually the most clever response: simply don't engage in a war where your enemy has the advantage.
What is telling about this fixation on costly weapons programs is the insistence of portraying the F-35 as this wonder weapon. Also what is telling is the problem that the USAF has ideologically had with the A-10 from the start, one of the most cheapest, most usable and most effective weapon platforms. Starting from the fact that the slow aircraft was basically developed to a role to assist the Army.
Yet there has been a campaign for the strike on Iran, which is discussed quite well in the following video which was released prior to the latest events. Worth listening if one has the time and is interested in the subject:
I'm perfectly well aware. I said the other day I favored Obama's Iran treaty. In my opinion a bad nuke deal is better than no nuke deal. Trump was 100% wrong on that, not to mention that showing the world that the US's word is only as good as the next election was simply a terrible thing to do.
I have a point of view that doesn't fit into the current paradigm of two warring sides that each regard the other as not only wrong, but uniquely evil.
My position, for the record, is that I agree with everything the left says about the right. And with everything the right says about the left. Our nation is in a very precarious position right now with few if any adults in the room. Jerry Nadler? That's your idea of a statesman?
So yes, Trump created this mess and now he's solving the mess he created. Yes I am perfectly well aware of that.
Thing is, I haven't heard much about Iran from the Democrats, in particular their presidential candidates. Cory Booker demanded that Biden apologize for consorting with segregationist southern Democrats (ie all of them of that era), and Biden said uh-uh no way am I going to apologize. On matters of war and peace? Crickets. If I missed one of the Dems saying something sane about foreign policy this week, I would thank you for a reference. I assume you are all familiar with Joe Biden's record on matters of war and peace. He's always been for war.
But that is Trump's style. Blow things up then calm things down. Just like his announcement that he was going to initiate nationwide immigration raids. Got everyone hysterical, then he cancelled that order too. That's his style. Without defending it in the least -- it's one of the worst things about him -- can't the left step back and stop getting triggered and going insane with anger every time he plays the same game? When will the left wise up?
Trump thrives on chaos. That doesn't mean YOU need to.
For the record, (1) My vote doesn't count, because I live in California, which will go strongly for any Dem candidate. But (2) to the extent that I can at least have an opinion, if not an actual vote, I would love to be able to vote for a Dem candidate. I don't see any besides Tulsi. Even Marianne Williamson is better that the rest of this crowd.
Bill Maher came out for Oprah. I am not alone in my low estimation of the crop of currently announced Democratic hopefuls.
In 2016 I favored Jim Webb in the Dem primary. If you know who he is you'll better understand my politics. And if you remember how he did (not very well) you'll appreciate my disenchantment with the state of the Democratic party.
Just because I don't experience the visceral hate and anger and fear the left has regarding Trump; please don't make the mistake that I'm not painfully aware of all his many faults.
Yes, that's why I say you still need "enough". My point was simply that in the context of a ground invasion you need significantly more. If you want me to elaborate on why exactly I can do so, but I was meaning for this to be obvious.
Quoting ssu
These systems wouldn't be all in some sort of storage. Some would, others would be camouflaged as well as have decoys. The Russians have been playing hide and seek with the Americans for decades, I assume they can hide these systems well enough. Now, once they fire they can be seen from space and targeted, but if a launch truck fires all it's missiles, the loss of the truck is fairly acceptable and can be replaced (why in my first comment focused on resupply from the Caspian so much).
Quoting ssu
Yes, but I'm assuming the Iranians ( / Russians telling them what to do) have set up these multiple layers.
Also, keep in mind that the biggest missiles in the S-400 system are for a pretty impressive range of up to 400 Km. So, some of these missiles can be kept 200 kilometers from the border / outer air-defense perimeter and still cover 200 km outwards. Some missiles can be at the border and target support air-craft (tankers, AEW&C, bombers wanting to fire various air-to-ground missiles) up to 400Km. These missiles can also cover an aircraft carrier -- air-craft carriers are launching planes all the time and are not themselves very stealthy, so you can just keep firing these missiles in the area of an aircraft carrier which at a minimum is highly disruptive and also doesn't involve trying to hit the carrier itself, which the US has said would treat as a nuclear escalation; taking pot-shots at planes around the carrier seems fair game (so, even in the current context, Russians probably won't sell missiles that can hit carriers at super long ranges to anyone).
Again, if these missiles work, this is incredibly disruptive to the the entire US war fighting framework, obviously that's the goal.
So, you stay out of range, but that significantly reduces effectiveness: time between sorties, time in / over combat, payloads reduced, and the potential need to outrun any AA missiles will burn more fuel further limiting range.
Of course, the US can change equipment, methods and tactics, such as swarms of killer drones controlled by some sort of skynet. However, that can't be done overnight, so there's significant geopolitical implications if we are currently witnessing an inversion in the stealth / carrier system vs AA systems (that are proliferating) hard power relations.
Quoting ssu
Yes, in terms of short term political public relations, we can be fairly confident Trump will spin this to his base in an extremely pleasing manner to them. I have no argument here.
There is no evidence that he is solving the mess he created. Is calling off an attack at the last minute your idea of solving the mess?
Quoting fishfry
There is no telling what the situation will be if and when one of the Democratic candidates wins. I would think that most would favor returning to the agreement, but that might already be too late. I would also think that they would be in favor of loosening sanctions and negotiating. But that is contrary to what Trump is doing and so empty talk since there is nothing they can do about it now.
Quoting fishfry
Completely irrelevant.
Quoting fishfry
Blow things up, blame someone else, claim that only he can fix it, and then claim that he has fixed it.
Quoting fishfry
Creating fear and uncertainty is not a "style".
Quoting fishfry
The problem is no one knows when he will actually carry out one of his threats.
Quoting fishfry
It is not simply a matter of him thriving on chaos, he creates chaos. It has real consequences that are not mitigated by pretending that it doesn't.
Maybe the first indication of a prediction (I made a couple of days ago) that Trump will throw Bolton and Pompeo under the bus for failing to defeat Iran, and brought in the most extreme neocons knowing in advance a war with Iran was foolish (because one of their general predecessors managed to at least explain this to him before leaving). Stay tuned for further confirmation at the next rally or so.
Does Iran have the S-400?
What I know is that a few batteries of S-300PMU2's were sold there, and it has some modern Tor mobile SAM launchers. Other systems are older or Iranian copies of older systems (SA-2, SA-5). Anyway, what's more interesting is the capability that Iran has in the offensive realm. I think they do want to think asymmetrically and have some quite surprising concepts for littoral warfare. Call it thinking out of the box. Just take the example of these Bavar-2 ship/aeroplanes!
Quoting boethiusNope, That's what the Chinese sell. Or at least the Iranians brag that they do have similar technology as the Chinese.
We don't know exactly what the Russians have supplied neither what the extent of their help is. As you've pointed out, optimizing the network of existing radars, command and control, and missiles goes a long way as well.
My comments about the 400km range were meant to be more general comment about these systems; just that the larger the missile the further it can be from harm as well as performing rolls adjacent to defending incoming attacks. Russia may not have supplied the largest missiles to Iran, but is selling the whole S-400 package to China, India, and even Turkey (also of geopolitical import).
Quoting ssu
Yes, if an pure air war would be too costly to the Americans (how many losses would be "too costly" is of course up for debate) and / or not accomplish the goal of pushing Iran into a failed state or at least giving them a good spanking, then ground invasion solves the air-war-of-attrition problem.
If you don't want Iran covering the straight with anti-ship missiles then you need to take the whole coast. Iran has been doing what it can to prepare, how effective these tactics will be is anyone's guess but I think it's difficult to expect zero losses in taking the coast. Then there's a lot of mountains.
Take all this together, and I feel the opinion of the chairman of the joint's chief echoes the theory I'm defending here: "If you want to really stop Iran’s nuclear program, that immediately gets you to regime change, which is an enormous undertaking." There's no mention of the potential of just bombing them like in Libya. Of course, it might not be mentioned precisely because they want Iran and Russia to think that they think Iran's Russian anti-air is more effective than it is to hide their real capacity and all out air-war plan.
Quoting ssu
Here I think the US really can be confident that China, much less Iran, if far behind Russia in the rocket technology required to penetrate the carrier group missile-defense systems.
What Russia is doing is moving towards a world where "sure, you have carriers no one will touch, but they're filled with planes you can't use (without large losses)".
The problem this creates for the neocons is that "dominating the air" part of the galactic spectrum is supposed to allow bombing wars to be fought with basically zero causalities and land-wars fought with a lot less casualties. If the US starts experiencing a lot of air (human) losses, American public will probably lose taste for these sorts of wars too.
Well, they've predicted that happening and the solution is drones, but it's unclear at the moment if you can field a fully drone army in the air, much less land. To attack a sophisticated enemy with only predator drones and the like, they need to be essentially fully autonomous due to the need for radio silence and facing jamming anyways. At the moment it maybe very easy to get these systems to fire at decoys for instance; ok, so you send more, but how many more is acceptable.
The purpose of the F-35 is to continue to be able to pummel small naughty states from the air while drone warfare is perfected, then the F-35 transitions to the roll of some sort of drone shepherd (this is my reading of the neocons anyway). If my theory is correct, the US now has a tool missing in the ol' pummeling belt.
I think the real threat is more likely the age old enemy that simply is forgotten: mines and the diesel submarine. During the Falklands war Argentine subs got to the point to attack the British carriers… and their torpedoes went haywire. The Argentinians blamed sabotage, others blamed incompetence of the Argentinians. But of course history and the perception of naval warfare would be different, because losing even one aircraft carrier would have meant that the British fleet would have had to sail back. And there are numerous times in excersizes when submarines have snuck into the perimeter of the carrier battle group and sunk the aircraft carrier.
(See Special Report : Aircraft carriers, championed by Trump, are vulnerable to attack)
Yet as the last action in pure naval combat from a submarine has been the sinking of General Belgrano, a WW2 era light cruiser over 30 years ago, the debate around the threat has been diminished.
Iran has 39 submarines (7 submarines and 32 midget submarines armed with torpedoes, missiles and mines). They aren't top of the notch, but one submarine totally silent at the right place is all you need.
Mines are not a big threat in the middle of the ocean. For instance, Iran would place a lot of mines around potential landing sites, but this wouldn't threaten a carrier.
As for subs and torpedoes, the US has very significant anti-submarine technologies. That carriers are sunk in war games isn't really insightful if we can't compare to how many times they aren't sunk in such games as well as how good the submarines were.
However, in terms of geopolitics, anti-air is also very different than sinking the carrier. For, there are many cases where the US is "punishing" a country, like blowing up a pharmaceutical factory or something; in such disputes, sinking a carrier is simply far outside the realm of reason even if you could do it.
It's also important to keep in mind, short of nuclear torpedoes, you'd need to hit the carrier a lot of times to actually sink it. So on the chance your sub avoids detection, and fires some torpedoes, and on the chance these torpedoes avoid whatever counter measures the carrier group has, and on the chance your German supplied torpedoes actually explode (instead of not exploding as the Argentinians experienced), you may still not do major damage to the carrier much less sink it. It will disrupted, potentially disabled, but will be replaced by another carrier. However, your submarine is definitely sunk at this point.
Which brings up an important difference, that it's possible to re-supply anti-air, whereas you can't effectively resupply whole submarines, much less train new crews. This goes for pretty much all navy assets.
And, in these altercations, it's the US that decides to bomb or not, and exactly when to bomb. So even if there was some non-zero probability an Iranian sub could sneak up to and launch torpedoes at a carrier ... well the US can just put in some extra effort beforehand to make sure they find the Iranian subs first and sink them. Diesel subs need to surface; maybe the US loses track of them sometimes, but I would bet they can reacquire them, especially if they plan to bomb the country the sub belongs to.
Effective anti-air on the other hand, more-so when resupply is feasible, incurs an unavoidable cost to air assets. So the question becomes how much of a cost to achieve the objective, and if the cost involves lives then the US population is forced to think of whether the imperial goal at play is worth these lives; US population invariably figures out the answer is no, because the average American sees no benefit from these imperial skirmishes (they don't live in a world where of course the vast scope of the Empire is required to afford lavish luxuries like health care for everyone).
The Red Sea, The Persian Gulf and the Straight of Hormuz aren't wide spaces. An Aircraft carrier on the Red Sea is like in a bathtub.
Quoting boethius
Not much is insightful when there hasn't been a major naval exchange for a long, long time.
Quoting boethius
Modern torpedoes slice a cruiser or a destroyer into two parts, hence a hit to bigger ship would Still be very damaging. And aircraft carriers are built for speed, they aren't armoured like old battleships. Again some issues have changed from WW2.
Quoting boethius
And this is the reason that once you are deemed by the neocons or the Washington "Blob", the Foreign Policy Apparatus, to be a rogue state, it's indeed totally rational to procure a nuclear deterrent. With a functioning nuclear deterrent the US will likely not attack you. Hence Iran is on the firing line because it hasn't got what Pakistan and North Korea have.
:up:
Yes, certainly the straight of Hormuz can be mined but also be covered by anti-ship missiles, so the mine problem would be more an post-war-hazard/nuisance, after a land invasion has already succeeded (in taking the coast at least). Doesn't really stop a bombing campaign is my main point about mines.
Quoting ssu
Yes, the best and biggest torpedoes might have a good chance at sinking a carrier with one hit. However, smaller nations with smaller and less accurate torpedoes; it could take a bunch just to disable it. A too small torpedo exploding under the carrier may do no damage at all. Presumably, the carriers are structurally optimized to take torpedo hits as best as they can.
My basic point is that even with the bust sub out there and the best crew, there's room for failure and high probability of being sunk after firing said torpedoes. As the quality of the sub, torpedoes and crew decreases, I'd wager chance of success evaporates quickly.
There's also the usual operational problem of using subs, in that if they really are perfectly positioned and totally silent and hidden, they could be right next to the carrier and not realize the war has started.
But the submarine example exemplifies this geopolitical shit in terms of hard power; assuming my theory is correct that the US cancelled the attack due to unacceptable expected losses, which is the US military is excellent at finding and destroying large assets like a submarine or an airfield. If to be competitive in the air you need an airfield, well it's hard to compete if your airfield and all you planes have been blown up. If to be competitive in the sea you need submarines, the cost is very high and the learning curve to operate submarines is likewise incredibly high.
Crucially, for this discussion, if you can't see stealth aircraft, your planes and your AA missiles won't be very useful.
A modular antimissile system that is a threat to stealth, that can be easily deployed effectively (easy compared to submarines), and can be acquired now that the Russins are selling it, changes the geopolitics of the American "stick".
Quoting ssu
Yes, this has been the case, but we may have seen a major change during the course of this thread.
With effective anti-air available, it becomes possible for states targeted by the US to accomplish a second way of the "Finnish strategy" vis-a-vis the USSR, which was to have a credible enough conventional defense that the cost of invasion (or being bombed into a failed state, transposing to the US) continually outweighs the benefits.
Without effective anti-air, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya invasion/bombings demonstrated that there's essentially zero competition, as you say, only nuclear weapons would have been a deterrent. What we have seen over the past couple of days is potentially the first conventional deterrent to a US desire to bomb something.
The most recent news also fits with my theory here, as apparently there was a cyber attack on anti-air computer systems. If stealth simply works great and allows penetration of enemy air-defense systems and blowing up said systems with relative ease, then there would simply be no reason to burn cyber assets.
Presumably, these cyber weapons were used because they were needed to minimize risk to the fighter/bombers, and so again, if the hacking failed to shut down these systems (or enough of them), then the mission would presumably be much more likely to be canceled due to higher expected casualties to avenge a drone -- so this new information fits the theory that "expected US casualties was the cause of canceling the strike" rather than suddenly glancing up from an angry birds session and asking if it's occurred to anyone to find out if Iranians could die in this whole warry-fighty thing that seems to be going on. (it also fits Trump's bully personality to claim that the cyber attack in itself was some sort of retaliation, which is just preposterous; classic bully delusionalism of backing away from a fight as soon as there's any risk and then repeating "totally showed that idiot who's boss" based on some delusional reconstruction of events)
Your theory fits the facts we know better than any alternative I've heard. Unless Baldrick/Trump's cunning Iran strategy was to end up looking like a weak flip flopper, there must have been a very serious counterweight to bombing other than his beautiful soul (which has heretofore not made its presence strongly felt on the domestic or foreign front).
Yes, it almost seems obvious now, though my first post was before the drone hit and this launching/cancelling op, so that events unfolded according to the theory (there would be no bombing) in real time is pretty strong evidence.
Of course, Trump didn't need to tell us about the launchy-cancelly event ... and, I actually thought I was exaggerating (a bit) that "Trump would just tell us as early as next week" but it turns out I undersold myself as he started confirming the theory essentially the very next morning.
What's amazing is that no amount of harm to the empire has or likely could -- nor do we even thinks warrants discussion anymore -- result in Republicans impeaching Trump.
Khomeni's been there a long time. To him, Trump's a blip. But arming Iran's neighbors is a major problem. It helps to look at it from their viewpoint.
Iran purchased the S-400, but then the West complained and Russia apparently "down-graded the system". We don't know how much, but Russia is highly motivated to deter a US war on Iran and highly motivated to demonstrate their technology works if there is a war.
However, on the effectiveness of the S-400 system, other interesting facts in the news today.
[quote=Reuters;https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-usa-security/turkey-will-lose-f-35-warplane-if-russia-arms-deal-goes-ahead-u-s-says-idUSKCN1TQ11O]Washington and its allies have urged fellow NATO member Ankara not to install the S-400 system, saying that would let the technology learn how to recognize the F-35s, which are built to avoid tracking by enemy radars and heat sensors.[/quote]
And also from the same article:
[quote=Kay Bailey Hutchison, the U.S. ambassador to NATO;https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-usa-security/turkey-will-lose-f-35-warplane-if-russia-arms-deal-goes-ahead-u-s-says-idUSKCN1TQ11O]So many of us have tried to dissuade Turkey[/quote]
Though I have no doubt Turkey flying around F-35's around a S-400 system is going to vastly improve the S-400's ability to track the F-35, what's left out is the obvious implication that S-400 has the technical capacity to track F-35s already; it's just a question of signal processing which we can be pretty sure Russia has been doing it's best at already with data and numerical models it already has. And therefore, we can basically conclude from NATO's own statements that F-35 is vulnerable to the S-300/400 system.
We can also make the obvious conclusion that in any engagement with the F-35, the S-400 system is also going to be doing this "learning" (it's more difficult than cross checking an F-35 known flight path with S-400 signal data, but doable).
Why this is so significant is that the F-35 is both very early in it's life-cycle but also too late to change or replace and also "dope" expensive (dope in the sense of being the largest acquisition in the history of acquisitions). The F-35 makes significant sacrifices in essentially everything -- cruise-speed, top-speed, turn speed, climb speed, range, fuel efficiency, ordinance capacity, jamming capacity, maintenance complexity -- in order to have a "cheap" multi-roll stealthy plane. If you're in a stealth plane that's being tracked and targeted ... well, you're gonna want all these other characteristics planes are capable of having. (It's very different to the F-22, which has stealth "on-top" of being an arguably very good plane; maybe it was very expensive to have this stealth "on-top" ... and so not enough were built ... but of the ones that were built, you still have good equipment even in situations where stealth is not so useful).
Now, all these arguments against the F-35 have been made since the program was public, and criticism of the program did lead to some changes -- like no longer consistently awarding 85% of the "success fees" based on "likeability of the sales-rep" rather than parameters involving success -- what I'm arguing in this thread is that these latest Iran-US "tensions" are strong indications that all these arguments against the F-35 have come to pass.
Have been pretty busy with work travels ... but can't let it slide that as I predicted 3 months ago, Trump threw Bolton under the bus.
Followup prediction, this is the process of normalizing relations; i.e. abandoning the Bolton policy of maximum pressure on EU to not trade with Iran, (in other words, stop trying to prevent EU fulfilling the Iran deal). That Iran is mostly out of the news cycle for a while was just warm up to quietly reversing policy. Firing Bolton is the signal the policy is in fact reversing now.
Of course, prediction that Trump will explain Bolton's failure at one of his rallies still stands; Iran will come up again as a hot topic in the election cycle, and Trump will burn Bolton for failure in that moment (that he gave Bolton some leeway on his crazy ideas, and Bolton couldn't deliver).
This is simply not true. Politics usually ends with larger political units; granted, often the direct consequence of wars along the way (but not always), but politics then continues after that point. City states in Europe would fight with their city state neighbors all the time, now nobody conceives of politics between Venice and Milan being settled by fisty cuffs.
As for Iran, the Neocons have been painting war with Iran as essentially fait accomplie for decades, just a question of when not if, but the reality may simply be that there's no reasonable war plan with Iran, and signing the Iran deal makes it an order of magnitude harder as no ally would come along for the ride and the US would be mocked at home and abroad for going to war to enforce a deal that was torn up for no good reason and no reasonable alternative plan. The meme template would be "US: sign this deal; Iran: ok; US: haha no deal! Iran: ok; US: This means war! now we're gonna make you live by the deal whether you like it not; Iran: ok, come at me bro (smacks down drone)".
This is exactly why the Neocons complained and moaned (and writhed on the floor) so much and so loudly when Obama negotiated the deal; it does effectively tie the hands of future administrations, regardless of staying in the deal or not; even putting the most Neocons of Neocons in charge of war policy was not able to reverse it.
What isn't true? Your post is filled with political events.
I directly quoted you:
Quoting TheMadFool
Your statement here is not "politics is filled with events", but "politics always ends in war".
The history of politics so far is building larger and larger political units where wars between internal members (cities in Italy, or countries in the EU) becomes increasingly unlikely.
Now, I'm not saying here all wars will eventually go away, just that "politics always ends in war" we can observe not to be true: lot's of political relations don't end in war; some countries, not to speak of cities within those countries, have not had a war in a very, very long time and yet have been doing politics with many other countries all this time.
Now, if your point is that as a general rule "if we wait long enough there will eventually be a war somewhere", ok sure, probably, but that doesn't inform us whether war between Iran and US is likely or unlikely any time soon, which is the subject here.
:ok:
My remarks were meant as more of an opinion than a well considered verdict. I just have a very low opinion of politics, that's all.
Yeah, I get the pessimism. Even if war with Iran is avoided, there's a genocide in Yemen as we speak, not to mention looming global ecological catastrophe.
However, turning pessimism into fatalism seals our fate. If it we have duty to fight for justice when the odds are good, it is no less a duty when the odds are bad; but there needs to be some odds, if the result is guaranteed then duty dissolves in it.
That ignorant smart (not really) ass Mr. Carlson among the other deplorables at Fox now describes Mr. Bolton as a "man of the left". I've heard many things about Mr. Bolton over the years, but a man of the left? Come on.
Is Mr. Carlson just reading what has been written for him or is he really that dense?
(Please excuse the New York Times-like salutations)
Trump is not a neocon, all evidence points to Trump being guided solely by what Trump sees as good for Trump.
Quoting Teller
Carlson is a propagandist. This particular propaganda servers several purposes. First, simply saying Bolton is to the left of Trump appeases Trump supporters that Trump is still far right; the content of the argument doesn't really matter, it sounds good.
This is the same reason why Trump took jibes at Bolton for being "Mr. Toughguy" followed by stating that he's tougher than Bolton (lot's of tough things they're doing was too tough for Mr. Tough guy), this plays to his audiences intuitions that more wars is not what they want (what Bolton's toughness represents) but at the same plays to the "conservative are tough" virtue signalling by just saying "Bolton wasn't tough enough" (is actually a phony tough guy beside the "real toughness" of Trump). Trump supporters can thus both be comforted by not going to war, as they've learned it's painful through recent experience, but still live in the imagination land of themselves and Trump being the true warriors willing to go to war at the drop of a hat.
The other thing this piece of propaganda accomplishes is just "left bad, Bolton out, Bolton therefore bad, Bolton therefore left". This doesn't have any of the subtleties of the above tiptoeing around loving war and the empire but seemingly backing away from war and more empire building, because Trump supporters don't require any basis in fact or plausible argument to attack the left. This is the same category as saying the Nazi's weren't fascists but socialists because socialist is right there in their title; if they were fascists they would be "the national fascist" party; those Trump supporters that know this makes not sense on any level repeat it anyway to "trigger the snowflakes" and those that genuinely have zero historical knowledge make every effort to keep it that way so that they can genuinely believe Nazi's where socialists in league with communists and trade-unionists.
Pulling any of these threads of course reveals a completely absurd world view required to backup any of these claims, but the key to this sort of propaganda is to never play the "backup claims" game. All statements are just weapons against the opposition, to bring supporters to rally around a feels-good chant and show impenetrable solidarity by openly mocking the idea of civil discourse or then to frustrate and waste the time of the opposition in getting them to devote time to trying to explain such basic facts and logical rules that it's hard to explain to someone refusing to accept any premise no matter how basic.
And it also serves another purpose of keeping the myth alive that republicans are for small government, by equating big government with the left. They don't want word to get out that other forms of government, like fascism and corporatism, are also for big-government insofar as it benefits the wealthy and powerful (bailouts, standing army to expand empire, large police apparatus to put down dissent, big government surveillance); the Nazi's had a big government going on: therefore Hitler was a lefty.